WHATTA BIRTHDAY, CALL US FOR YOUR CONDOR VISIT

Here’s email I got from good friend and fellow birder:  “We went to Big Sur for my birthday this week.  While have a massage in the room, the masseuse told us that she saw 3 condors fly by our window.
“She mentioned it after we were finished….otherwise I would have grab[bed] the bins and started following them!  We generally walk to the hot tub which is
about two minutes away near the room after our massages.  So I say to R that we should go to the hot tub and soak for awhile…..as we are walking there and told her “I wish I could see a condor…..that is my birthday wish” (it has been around 8 yrs since I’ve seen one…I sent you those photos)……so I keep looking up at the sky hoping to spot one……so one minute later as we approach the hot tub…….I can’t believe what I see…..3 condors pecking at the thermostat for the pool….right by the pool…..I whisper to R that I’m going back to grab my camera and try to capture this moment……I looked like Usain Bolt running the 100 mm race at the Olympics going back to the room…..I dash back as fast as I can and started taking some photos…..now they are pulling the towels from a high stack of towels for the guests!  They were hilarious….as the towel in the middle was being pulled out….they jumped back to avoid having the whole stack fall on them….two of them had tags, while the young one was untagged….their wing span must have been 7 to 8 feet wide [adults are near 9 feet, longest in U.S.  White Pelicans #2]…..incredible! I could have got closer, but I didn’t want them to fly away. so I’m going to send you the pics for your enjoyment…….I mentioned what happened to the staff and there is a website called “condorspotter.com” which tells you information about the specific condor……wow, what a birthday gift!”

If the towel had been dirtyIf the towel and been dirty and smelly would it have held more interest for them?  Or are they simply curious?  Adults do collect shining objects and carry them back to the nest sometimes.I

CAL-GAL #2

More fine work from the lens of Barbara Bens on our PIB trip along the California Coast earlier this month:
Brown Pelicans at ease around the ocean.


Pair of Condors high over the ridge at the top of Pfeiffer-Burns State Park, Big Sur.

Elephant seals scuffling at Piedras Blancas.

Not all elephant seals are warlike all the time:

Great Horned Owl in flight at Drake’s Beach, Pt. Reyes

Heermann’s Gull thinking deeply. Could be anywhere in coastal California this time of year.

California Quail at Pt. Reyes National Seashore visitors center.

Rockpipers: Surfbird on left, Black Turnstone on right. Asilomar State Beach.

Red-shouldered Hawk in fog east of Morro Bay.

Western Scrub-Jay:

Warerfall at Pfeiifer-Burns:

White-crowned Sparrow in flight:

Flying Willet

CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’ FOR NEXT SEPTEMBER

I will be leading a trip along the California Coast next September. It will be at the height of shorebird migration: Black Turnstone, Wandering Tattler, Red-necked Phalarope, Surfbird, Marbled Godwit, various sandpipers and plovers. Click here for itinerary.
Of course, we will cruise along Big Sur, a magnificent coastal highway, in search of North America’s largest bird (by wingspan).

These Condor pictures were taken on the same route a couple years ago. There are now more condors flying free than are in captivity. A remarkable story of saving an endangered species that once got down to less than 20 individuals.

Click here to see what’s up on the Ventana Wilderness Society’s CONDOR CAM.

The trip will also take us in pursuit of California’s two endemic Corvids (no other American state has even a single endemic): Island Scrub-Jay and Yellow-billed Magpie. Other hard-to-find birds we will seek: California Gnatcatcher, Oak Titmouse, Nuttall’s Woodpecker, California Thrasher, Hermit Warbler, Hutton’s Vireo, Heermann’s Gull and Cassin’s Auklet. Come enjoy some California sun and birding.

FORGET CUTE, THIS IS REAL LIFE

The California Condor livecam is not going to show you cute chicks in the nest or cuddly little cubs with their mom. It will show you wild California Condors feeding. Best time to watch is during the morning hours, Pacific Time. This camera is in the Big Sur area of California. Click here for link.
The camera is maintained by the Ventana Wilderness Society which monitors the Big Sur population of condors. There are now over 200 in the wild though there are less than 500 in the world altogether. At one time the condors seemed doomed and all were placed in captivity. The breeding program has now succeeded to the point where the big birds are once again breeding in the wild.
Furthermore, California just banned lead shot which has been the single greatest health threat to these scavengers in the wild. They often find deer and other animals wounded by hunters and then lost, thus ingesting bits of the shattered and scattered lead shot leading to toxic levels of lead poisoning.
Here’s more on the condor cam which went live this week. I took all these condor photos along Hiway 1 in Big Sur while leading a Partnership for International Birding trip there. Nearly every condor carries a visible wing tag so they can monitored. Some also have tiny transmitters so they can be tracked electronically.

An expert from the Ventana Wilderness Society told us this pair was a father and son, often seen hunting together along the Big Sur Coast, sailing high above the Pacific surf. On this day the two came out of the fog, then circled a few times before disappearing back into the fog.
Condors have the largest wingspan of any North American bird, slightly larger than the White Pelican and often exceeding nine feet. For comparison, your neighborhood Red-tailed Hawk has a wingspan less half that great and the Turkey Vulture’s wingspan is less than two-thirds of a condor’s.
To get your own photos of a soaring condor, come along one of PIB’s California trips.

CONDOR GALLERY

There is a wondwerful series of photos taken by Marilyn Rhodes on our recent Partnership of International Birding trip to California. The trip was sponsored by Denver Audubon. Here’s Marilyn’s series [on Facebook] of two soaring California Condors over our heads along Hwy 1 along the spectacular Big Sur Coast. Click here.

With fewer than 250 individuals in the wild, the California Condor is the rarest bird knwon to still exist in North America. We can only hope the Eskimo Curlew or I-B Woodpecker come along alive to replace the condor, one of the great coonservation success stories of the past two decades. The condors are now successfully breeding in the wild.

When there are no birds about the Big Sur coast does offer some scenery to look at. Click on image above for a full-screen view.

CALIFORNIA BIRDING

I just got back from leading a six-day birding trip across Central California. We hit San Francisco, Pt. Reyes, Livermore, Sierra Foothills, Monterey and Big Sur. We had 149 species before six of our birders took the extension pelagic trip with Debbie Shearwater out of Monterey Harbor.
Biggest bird, of course, was a pair of California Condors about sixty feet overhead. They turned out to be father and son. Each free-flying condor carries a wing number.


Some other highlights included such California specialties as Oak Titmouse, Nuttall’s Woodpecker, the endemic Yellow-billed Magpie, California Thrasher on Mines Road south of Livermore, Townsend’s Warbler (a wintering species), Tricolored Blackbird on Pt. Reyes Peninsula and California Towhee.
Uncommon migrants included 2 Harlequins at Pt. Reyes, a Pectoral Sandpiper at Asilomar State Beach in Pacific Grove and a Chestnut-sided Warbler at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park.
Birds that are generally not found east of the Sierra Nevada included: White-headed Woodpecker, Hermit Warbler, Sooty Shearwater, Black Turnstone, Surfbird, Black Oystercatcher, Heermann’s Gull.
Other birds of limited range included Elegant Tern, Marbled Godwit and Snowy Plover.
We saw hundreds of Red-necked Phalarope:

Altogether we had two dozen shorebird species on this trip.

BEACH BIRDS AND MORE

“Wish they all could be California birds….”                  –Beach Birds

Some general information: Whenever we are within ten miles of the coast, a cool wind and/or fog is possible. The northern Pacific Ocean does NOT warm up each summer as do the Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico or southern Pacific. Due to currents and upwelling the surface of the Pacific along the Northern California Coast stays very close to 55 degres year round. Clearly that moderates the weather nearby. The cold water and upwelling make for very rich fishing waters which in turn makes for very rich coastal birding. It will make for very cold birders if you come dressed for a day on the beach in Florida.
We will try to be at dinner by 630PM each night. At dinner we will go over the day’s bird sightings and update our checklist(s).

We’re putting together a trip around Northern California for some folks who live east of the Rockies.  Here’s what we’re up to:  Birders arrive at SFO on the morning of September 9.  By noon we will be birding along Ocean Beach in San Francisco.  There’ll be Brandt’s Cormorant, Surf Scoter, Common Murre, Heermann’s Gull, Black Oystercatcher, Marbled Godwit, Black Turnstone, Surfbird, Wandering Tattler.  A little uphill from the ocean: California Towhee (see picture below), Chestnut-backed Chickadee, Black Phoebe.
SEPT. 10 We will be at Pt. Reyes, one of the finest birding venues on the Pacific Coast. We will be there for the height of fall migration. Vagrants always possible. In addition we will find some of the local specialties: Nuttall’s Woodpecker, Pelagic Cormorant, Western Gull, Glaucous-winged Gull, Hutton’s Vireo, California Quail, White-tailed Kite (see picture). Western Sandpiper is also likely. se wil lbird at Pt. Reyes and nearby Bolinas Lagoon.
SEPT. 11 We will move inland from the coast. Along the way we should find Oak Titmouse, Yellow-billed Magpie (a California endemic, see picture below) and maybe even a California Thrasher. We stay this night and next in the Central Valley.
SEPT. 12 We will bird in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. This is our day to find White-headed Woodpecker, Hermit Warbler, and some fall migrants that stick to higher elevation. Perhaps a Green-tailed Towhee or Western Tanager. This will be our best chance for a Dipper as well.
SEPT. 13. We head back to the coast at Monterey. In addition to the irresistible sea otters we should find plenty of migrating shorebirds including Red-necked Phalarope, any gulls or loons we may have missed further north, and a chance for wandering sea birds like Black-legged Kittiwake and Parasitic Jaeger that sometimes come near shore. The gull is an adult Western in bright plumage.
SEPT. 14 We will bird Highway 1 along the scenic Big Sur Coast. Our target of the day: California Condor, the largest, self-powered flying animal in North America. The Condor’s return to living and breeding in the wild is a major conservation success story of our generation. We may also find Dipper, Pileated Woodpecker, Rufous-crowned Sparrow and Wrentit (America’s only member of the Babbler family).
SEPT. 15 Departure day or optional pelagic birding with Shearwater journeys out of Monterey. Those on the pelagic trip should see Ashy Storm-petrel, Sooty and Buller’s Shearwater, Black0tailed and Laysan Albatross, all three jaegers, Arctic Tern, Sabine’s Gull, Cassin’s and Rhino Auklet, Red Phalarope. Whales and dolphins are also likely on this trip.
If this sounds interesting, contact us at Partnership for International Birding.